The use of digital cameras has increased in recent years. Accordingly, the volume of commercial and consumer held digital image files has also increased. Much like the problem of a closet full of shoe boxes of randomly held photographic prints, in the digital environment, there are computer “shoe boxes” full of randomly stored digital images. In addition, there is an increasing use of VCD and DVD players and an increasing number of available digital images and video clips. This leads to a need for a system and/or method of locating, categorizing, and sharing of digital images that is easy and fun as well as being cost and time efficient.
One approach is to compose digital images, text, speech annotations, and music clips on compact discs (CD) or digital video discs (DVD), which can be played back as multimedia albums/programs on a television using a video CD player or DVD player.
Such a television-centered system differs from the popular computer-centered systems. For example, the Kodak Picture CD product (available from Eastman Kodak Company) provides digital image sharing and viewing capabilities employing a computer. However, the CD format of the Kodak Picture CD does not, as currently configured, play on a television.
It is known to encode audio and video information as a VCD compatible program and transfer the program onto a CD in an ISO 9660 format. Such a CD is playable on VCD/DVD players and computer systems. The VCD encoding employs a particular MPEG-1 standard with the target applications having bit rates of no more than 1.5 Mbits per second. With such a bit rate constraint, the image resolution is limited to 352×240 on NTSC system (which is popular in the United States and Japan) and 352×288 on PAL system (which is popular in Europe and China). The resolution of 352×240 on NTSC and 352×288 on PAL are often referred to as the normal resolution, and the counterpart of spatial resolutions of 704×480 on NTSC and 704×575 on PAL are often referred to as the high resolution.
The particular MPEG-1 standard is intended to encode motion picture sequences at a CD-ROM bit rate having an entertainment quality. Therefore, it is typically not a suitable standard for displaying still images, such as a multimedia album or slide show, on a television. When a video sequence is rendered at a high frame rate, for example 29.97 frame/second for NTSC or 25 frames/second for PAL, the temporal filtering of fast moving frames conceals most of the spatial distortion. However, when a still image is subsampled to the normal resolution, encoded by an MPEG-1 encoder (block-based JPEG-like compression for intra frame), and displayed on a television, the distortion, such as blocking artifacts, can be pronounced.
An audio and video program can be encoded on a DVD using the MPEG-2 standard since a DVD has much higher capacity than a CD, and therefore can afford to store higher spatial resolutions (i.e., 720×480 on NTSC system, and 720×576 on PAL system). However, the DVD technology is more expensive and more complex, as compared to the CD technology. Thus, the DVD media and the writing devices are often viewed as being too expensive for most consumers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,084,582 (Qureshi) titled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RECORDING A VOICE NARRATION TO ACCOMPANY A SLIDE SHOW” discloses a method and apparatus for recording and digitizing audio inputs as audio segments which are stored and associated with the corresponding slide. The slide show is a digital tile (e.g., a PowerPoint) intended for play back on a personal computer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,507 (Moorby) titled “COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR AUTHORING A MULTIMEDIA COMPOSITION USING A VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE MULTIMEDIA COMPOSITION” discloses a computer system for composing and displaying a multimedia presentation having one or more multimedia events through graphical user interface. U.S. Pat. No. 6,081,262 (Gill) titled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR GENERATING MULTI-MEDIA PRESENTATIONS” discloses a document layout paradigm to regulate the spatial relationships among the plurality of objects contained within the multimedia presentation. In contrast to the present invention, these references are not directed to composing and rendering audio and still pictures as a high resolution slideshow displayable on a consumer electronic device (such as a DVD or VCD player) and computers having appropriate decoder, with enhanced image quality and audio manipulation.
Patent No. WO/0035194, titled “METHOD FOR ENCODING MULTIPLE AUDIO STREAM”, discloses a method and system for encoding still pictures or video streams with multiple sound streams, allowing a medium (e.g., compact disc) to be encoded with a large number of audio information. The method enables the storing and playing back of a large number of songs with video information on a compact disc. In contrast, the present invention is directed to enhancing image rendering quality (by image enhancement and composition, and high resolution slide show rendering) as well as the audio/visual enjoyment experience (by audio composition of voice annotation and music/song clips, and combination of audio/visual entertainment).
The term “high resolution” in the present invention refers to images with spatial resolutions of 704×480 on NTSC system and 704×576 on PAL system, which is related to the normal resolution of 352×240 on NTSC and 352×288 on PAL system, as specified by the Video Compact Disc specification. In contrast, several prior disclosures intended to enhance the resolution/quality of a single image by the combination of a group of still images. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,301, titled “APPARATUS FOR ENCODING AND DECODING HIGH RESOLUTION STILL IMAGES AND VIDEO IMAGES FOR RECODING ON A STANDARD STORAGE MEDIA”, discloses an apparatus for encoding still images on a conventional recording media (such as a VCR tape) by dividing the signals into a plurality of groups of signals, with each group corresponding to a plurality of different picture elements of the image. U.S. Pat. No. 6,349,154, titled “METHOD AND ARRANGEMENT FOR CREATING A HIGH-RESOLUTION STILL PICTURE”, discloses a method for creating a high-resolution still picture from a sequence of lower-resolution pictures after motion-compensated predictive coding. EP Patent No. 0731600, titled “SYSTEM FOR CREATING A HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE FROM A SEQUENCE OF LOWER RESOLUTION MOTION IMAGES”, discloses a method for creating a high resolution still picture from a video sequence based on the projections onto a convex scheme.
The present invention is intended to overcome the disadvantages noted above. More particularly, there exists a need for an easy, enjoyable, and cost and time-effective multimedia composition system and method, which can provide higher image and slideshow rendering quality. The present invention is directed to a system and method for composing audio and video information as a multimedia slideshow/album on a compact disc with higher spatial resolution and higher image quality than the normal resolution counterparts, which can be played back on VCD/DVD players. As such, the present invention provides such an easy, enjoyable, and cost and time-effective multimedia composition system and method.